‘Dog Man’ Review
Stars: Pete Davidson, Lil Rel Howery, Isla Fisher, Poppy Liu, Stephen Root, Billy Boyd, Ricky Gervais | Written and Directed by Peter Hastings
Written and directed by Peter Hastings, this delightfully manic animated comedy is based on the best-selling series of children’s graphic novels by Dav Pilkey. As such, the film is a spin-off, of sorts, from 2017’s Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie, which was also based on Pilkey’s novels.
For a U-rated animated comedy, Dog Man has a surprisingly dark beginning. Indeed, it’s basically RoboCop, only instead of a cop and a robot, it’s a cop and his pet police dog (both voiced by Hastings). Sure enough, after an introduction to the crime-fighting pair, they are suddenly caught in an explosion, after which a nurse looks at their mangled bodies and says, “What if we sew the dog’s head onto the man’s body?”
The result is Dog Man, a dedicated cop, with the head and instincts of a dog, which is why he can’t stop licking the face of his exasperated police chief (Lil Rel Howery). And when Dog Man’s arch-nemesis Petey the Cat (Pete Davidson) stages his latest jailbreak, Dog Man is determined to take him down.
Meanwhile, Petey’s latest dastardly scheme involves cloning himself in order to double his capacity for evil, but there’s a slight snag – he fails to read the instructions and ends up with a child version of himself, named Lil’ Petey (Lucas Hopkins Calderon). Petey already has his hands full with his tiny clone, but when another scheme spirals out of control and he re-animates a psychopathic, psycho-kinetic fish (Ricky Gervais), he realises he might have to join forces with Dog Man to avoid city-wide catastrophe.
Hastings’ direction is impressive throughout. It’s consistently inventive (look out for a brilliant throwaway gag involving TV show credits) and the rapid-fire pace ensures an extremely high gag rate, with a barrage of both verbal and visual jokes. The animation is gorgeous too, cleverly recreating the look of a children’s book, but also containing child-like text and illustration within that, most notably in a running gag involving Lil’ Petey making comics.
On top of that, though Dog Man works for young children, the film also explores a number of emotional adult themes, such as difficult father-son relationships, abandonment issues, grief and friendship. In addition, the voice work is superb – Davidson is wonderful as Petey, while Howery delivers a great comic turn as the Chief and there’s strong support from both Gervais (clearly enjoying himself) and Isla Fisher as on-the-spot reporter Sarah Hatoff.
Dog Man has a multitude of highlights, but one in particular deserves singling out. Having already established the RoboCop parallels, plot-wise, Hastings goes a step further and effectively recreates the RoboCop homecoming sequence, as Dog Man returns home after his surgery and is tormented by memories of his former lives. It’s heartbreaking and utterly brilliant and it might just be one of the best scenes of the year.
**** 4/5
Dog Man is out now.
